It's a tale as old as time: Ladies, you're just asking for it.
That's how film, TV and stage star Angela Lansbury sees it when it comes to the ever-widening sexual harassment scandal sparked by disgraced Hollywood honcho Harvey Weinstein.
"Although it's awful to say we (women) can't make ourselves look as attractive as possible without being knocked down and raped," the 92-year-old star told Radio Times, a weekly British program, reported The Telegraph. "We must sometimes take blame, women. I really do think that."
And Lansbury _ an actress known as Jessica Fletcher on "Murder, She Wrote," Broadway's Mame and Mrs. Lovett, the big-screen mother of "The Manchurian Candidate" and Mrs. Potts in Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" _ had more to say.
"There are two sides to this coin," she added. "We have to own up to the fact that women, since time immemorial, have gone out of their way to make themselves attractive. And unfortunately it has backfired on us _ and this is where we are today."
Dame Angela told the show she had not experienced harassment in Hollywood, where her career began in 1944 with her Oscar-nominated role in "Gaslight." She's worked steadily since, recently wrapping roles in a version of "Little Women" and the film "Mary Poppins Returns."
Lansbury said the tide could be turning.
"Should women be prepared for this? No, they shouldn't have to be. There's no excuse for that. And I think it will stop now _ it will have to. I think a lot of men must be very worried at this point," she said.
Lansbury's comments immediately drew strong criticism from social media.
"Angela Lansbury, star of the 1944 version of Gaslight, which gave us the term 'Gaslighting', has just declared that attractive women share the blame for sexual harassment," posted @FernRiddell.
The Rape Crisis England & Wales responded with a statement, noting, "It is a deeply unhelpful myth that rape and other forms of sexual violence are caused or 'provoked' by women's sexuality or 'attractiveness.'"
